Corvettes: Paradigm vs Venture?

Bandit LOAF said:
This was discussed at the top of the thread. The issue is that there's no reason for it. A closer look at the Paradigm reveals that it's dotted with large turrets and actually seems to be larger than other destroyers... plus the description that it's a particularly advanced warship from Origin FX... and the fact that even in terms of in-game weaponry it's more heavily armed than destroyers that came before it...
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Puts us back where we were, doesn't it? I mean, without a size stat, we're pretty well stuck.

You know what, forget about size. Let's look at their respective capabilities for a moment.

Paradigm: 200 kps, "Poor" acceleration, "Poor" Maneuverability, ?? Shields, 80/65/65/50 cm Armor - 2MES, 2TAC, 1IPC, 3xLASTUR, 3xMASTUR, 10x1DF, 2x1 IR, 1x1 HS
Gilgamesh: 250 kps, "Poor" acceleration, 2 dps, Phase Shields, 250/200/200/250 cm Armor - 2FLAK, 2AMG
Southampton: 200 kps, 10 kps^2, 5dps, 2000 cm Shields, 1000/1000/1000/100 cm Armor - 9xLASTUR, Light Fighter compliment.

The thing to note is the type of armament and the relative strength of the defenses. While the Paradigm may have more guns, none of them would be particularly effective against enemy capital ships, but they would be good against pirates, raiders and such. I mean, the Antimatter Guns on the Gilgamesh can bypass shields, so that's a definite anti-ship capability. Southampton...well, it's guns aren't all that strong necessarily, but they'd be sufficient to swat down incoming torpedoes or give incoming enemy bombers hell, and that's where its strength of defenses comes into play.

Strength of defenses...well, a centimeter of Durasteel is a centimeter of Durasteel is a centimeter of Durasteel. I mean, you can conceivably kill a Paradigm with civilian-grade weapons, while its contemporaries generally require torpedoes.

The Paradigm is clearly not a front-line warship - no matter how "advanced" it ostensibly is - but as a pirate interdictor, it could do the job without taking one of those heavier craft off the lines. It'd probably be cheaper to build too...all the more reason to even build something like this in the first place.

Anyway, I guess that's my argument for calling it a destroyer escort. It is stronger than the Exeter and Venture, no argument there.

Without going too deep into size, I'll play devil's advocate by saying that the ship could be really small and the guns normal-size, thus appearing big relative to the ship. Like I said, though, without a size stat...
 
The thing to note is the type of armament and the relative strength of the defenses. While the Paradigm may have more guns, none of them would be particularly effective against enemy capital ships, but they would be good against pirates, raiders and such. I mean, the Antimatter Guns on the Gilgamesh can bypass shields, so that's a definite anti-ship capability. Southampton...well, it's guns aren't all that strong necessarily, but they'd be sufficient to swat down incoming torpedoes or give incoming enemy bombers hell, and that's where its strength of defenses comes into play.
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The problem is that it's a long standing conceit in Wing Commander that the weapons we see in the game aren't the same as the ship's "real" fictional armament. This makes a certain amount of sense--what's the point of a destroyer with eight fighter-caliber lasers?--and there's something of an awkward science to figuring it out (largely thanks to False Colors.) The turrets we "see" are heavier weapons that aren't necessarily simulated in the game and then a ship is assumed to have a greater number of anti-fighter defenses (flak cannons, laser barbettes, etc.)

As you can see in the render earlier in the thread, the Paradigm has SIXTEEN visible dual-mount turrets... versus eight on the Gilgamesh, seven on the Exeter and nine on the Southampton. And then its fighter defenses, seen in the game, are very exotic for a capital ship--meson blasters, tachyons, mass drivers, ionic pulse cannons and so on instead of just lasers.

Without going too deep into size, I'll play devil's advocate by saying that the ship could be really small and the guns normal-size, thus appearing big relative to the ship. Like I said, though, without a size stat...
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I don't see how it can be very small when it's supposed to be carrying Stilettos and Broadswords... or, and here's the important thing, WHY it would need to be any of this. Privateer calls it a destroyer and treats it as pretty impressive (think of how important Terrell and Reismann treat two of them together as being... "a whole fleet,") so... /why would it need to be anything else/?

(The Privateer manual: "The Paradigm is one of the Confederations most advanced destroyers." That's almost the only thing we know about it. So why jump through hoops to figure out some elaborate way that that must not be true?)
 
Bandit LOAF said:
(The Privateer manual: "The Paradigm is one of the Confederations most advanced destroyers." That's almost the only thing we know about it. So why jump through hoops to figure out some elaborate way that that must not be true?)
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Oh, it actually says that? <flip...flip...flip...... /> Page 53. Sure enough. Okay...a big "never mind" from me, then.
 
capi3101 said:
I got it - could the Paradigm be a destroyer escort? You know, somewhere between a corvette and a full fleet destroyer?
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Can be. I work over it again and here it is:
Upside: 10 Turrets
screen0016.jpg

Downside: 6 Turrets:
screen0017.jpg

In the Privateer Manual it has : 2 Meson, 2 Tachyon and 1 Ionic Impulse Cannon and 3 Single Laser and 3 Single Mass Driver Turrets.

Now here I need to change that to the 16 turrets. Finaly I give it: 3 Tachyon Turrets, 5 Mass Driver Turrets and 8 Laser Turrets (more firepower as the original). Its not a counterpart to a real destroyer (except the Ralarad with the weapons),with its shields and armor not really a match to the other ones. A few AMG hits and this ship is history. But! I make a single mission to test the balance.... 40 fighters attacking the Paradigm. Over 20 ships are lost! I try it with Dralthi, Darkets and Vaktoths. The first wave of 10 Darkets are blown up in the first seconds. Afterall you can say: its a heavy threat to Kilrathi fighterwings. If Confed would build 2000 of this class and not the crappy Behemout, Blair don't do the suicide run with the Templor bomb. They 2000 would destroy every fighterwings the Kilrathi had.

PS: still problem with the eniginecoordinates :/
 
I appreciate seeing where the turrets are - but (without meaning to sound like a jerk about it) I do have to ask what part of "never mind" was unclear......
 
I read it too but I liked your idea.

Against a Southampton the Paradigm is just a little egg. Much more shields, armor, Capship missilelancher, AMG. Against a Gilga less shields, armor, 2 AMG vs. none. Even the light Ralarad with no AMG has much more shields and armor. So its a class between the Venture and the bigger destroyers. Better armed as a Kamekh but less armor and shields.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I don't see how it can be very small when it's supposed to be carrying Stilettos and Broadswords...
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Really? I always just thought it was a ship of the line, not any type of carrier...

For the purposes of adding it into a game, I would use all the size stats & role designation from the manuals, then add weapons to make it match those stats. As is said above, the weapons seen in-game obviously are as such to balance the type of gameplay in Privateer, where you are only engaging several fighters & single capship, with no wingman (in most circumstances).

To work with Saga style gameplay, I would be adding laser turrets for anti-fighter defence, slapping on a couple of anti-capship weapons (amg) and perhaps defensive missile armament. Hell, add torp launchers if needs be. Although some of the charm of the Paradigm (apart from the aesthetic) is the wide array of energy weapons, in my opinion gameplay considerations should be the focus. In a roundabout way, that brings it closer to achieving its purpose - a 'Destroyer' - in essence serving the fiction & literature rather than game-specific stats.

Does that make sense? Does in my head. But vomiting my brains onto the internet can be difficult. (and messy)
 
PARADIGM THREAD AHHHHHHH

Really? I always just thought it was a ship of the line, not any type of carrier...
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I think the vast majority of Wing Commander's destroyers have some small fighter complement.

Heck, The Secret Missions for the SNES has a VENTURE with a fighter complement. :)
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I think the vast majority of Wing Commander's destroyers have some small fighter complement.

Heck, The Secret Missions for the SNES has a VENTURE with a fighter complement. :)
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On the other hand, nowhere does it say that the fighters are all docked in an internal landing bay. In "End Run" we get to see fighters docking externally, for example.
 
Perhaps they had a long rope with them and attached the Rapiers to it, like those old sail ships had sometimes :D
 
Dyret said:
The paradigm is actually a moon.

True story.
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It's too big to be a moon. Probably some kind of space station. If I want a venture I usually just tape a bunch of cats together.

That's enough I'm not going to be responsible for prolonging the death throes of this thread. Somebody hand me a sidearm and I'll shoot it in the spine or cloaca or something.
 
Quarto said:
Hmm, I can't bring to mind what you might be referring to. Did that happen in End Run?
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Hmm, I can't bring to mind what you might be referring to. Did that happen in End Run?
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I was WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO ASK THAT!

Short answer: it was The Secret Missions for the SNES.

Longer answer: if you recall, memory space was SO limited on Wing Commander SNES that they couldn't even have all of the original ships... they had to double up the Salthi and use it as the Jalthi, palette swapped (which gave us the amazing 'Green Salthi' cover art painting for Secret Missions, too...)

Anyway, for The Secret Missions they ran into that problem again: one of the big draws of the game was that it added several new ships. They were entirely incidental to the gameplay, but they were probably the biggest bullet point. And here Mindscape was trying to sell Secret Missions as a $70 standalone game instead of a $30 mission disk. So they needed the new ships...

... which meant dumping some OLD ships. One of which, oddly, was the Exeter... which they dutifully replaced with the cool new Venture corvette. That meant that the Marciano could appear in the first mission... but--and I think you see where we're going with this--that the Gwenhyvar could not! Suddenly instead of a destroyer the Gwenhyvar was a corvette... but with same mission where you fight her Rapiers. They did properly change all the dialogue, so the characters talk about it as a corvette that defected "with her full complement of fighters."

And of course the game's spiffy new corvette design somehow became the focus of the ad campaign and it started showing up in all the promotional artwork. Here's a giant fleet of Ventures flying around the Tiger's Claw for some reason:

nintendo93feb2.jpg
 
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That sure is a fine bit of art. I miss the days of opening up gaming magazines and having my imagination set alive with some new half-page blotter of starships or whatever.
 
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